Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Every little boy has that intrepid adventurer in him. I
am all for cultivating that sense of adventure and imagination in every young
mind. The problem is that little boy still resides in my husband’s head. Sometimes
he still fancies himself an Oklahombre robbing the Santa Fe train for some
silver.

If you stand perfectly still, you will hear ghosts lamenting their past.

So one day, we went searching for ghost towns, so he
can live his illusions of being an Oklahoma Long Rider, using TravelOKCity as
an excuse. “It’ll be a good story,” he said with a straight face. We headed
towards the east from Stillwater, expecting to find forgotten towns inhabited
by shadows of former glories. Instead, we found proof of life, albeit slowed
down like the old lady manning the little service station at Blackburn in
Pawnee County.

Waiting for a vacancy at the very posh Ingalls hotel.

The Waltons was playing on a small television by the
door when we walked in. The owner greeted us cordially and asked where we’re
from. We’re from the city, we said. My husband stammered a bit when he revealed
that we were looking for historic places of interest, groping for a better term
than “ghost town”. “Ghost town, you say” she offered kindly with humor evident
in her tone. It was as if she knew that she was living in a place that had
somehow lost its place in the map. She took out a book and offered it to us. It
was a book on ghost towns of Oklahoma, featuring her town.

sweet little church

We needed to see the United Methodist Church, she said.
It was built in the early 1900s. And without looking, as if she had done this
numerous times, she offered us a key so we could take a look inside. We took it
with reverence as if we were handed the key to the city. The quaint house of worship had beautiful
stained glass windows that were crafted by her daughter. The register of
attendance plaque said that last Sunday’s attendance was 15.

The baby in the manger sheds some light.

Walking back, we came upon a brick building with a
weathered sign that said “Oasis”. It had yellowed palm tree cutouts against peeling
wall boards. It was far from what we imagined as a refreshing retreat but we figured
it used to be the town’s popular watering hole. The rest of the town center was
lined with buildings with pretty much the same condition. They however stood
impressive, perhaps owing it to the sturdy brick that still stubbornly held their
frames as shadows of their former splendid state, when Blackburn was once a
bustling whiskey town in Oklahoma Territory. Incorporated in 1909, it once
boasted two banks, a public school, and three churches.

glimpses of the forgotten

Today, the little lady selling candy bars and
soda remains as one of the 15 who keep the church and maybe even the whole
community busy.

On our way out, we saw a makeshift sign that said:

Things to do today:

1.Get organized.

2.Talk to spouse.

3.Get re-organized.

4.Talk to spouse.

5.Abandon entire idea.

6.Talk to self.

We wouldn’t be surprised if she made the sign herself.

signs of the living

There were no signs of outlaws, so we moved on to
Ingalls where the famous Battle of Ingalls once happened. Here, gunshots were
exchanged between the U.S. Marshals and the Doolin Dalton Gang, the Oklahombres
notorious for bank and train robberies. During the shootout, three deputies and two
townspeople were killed while the Wild Bunch escaped.

I am so pleased with how my Pentax poin-and-shoot performed during this trip.

Today, not even echoes of the guns could be heard. The
dust and the smoke have long settled on the few remaining buildings,
dilapidated and withering: the R.M. Salon, the Wilson general merchandise
store, and the Ingalls Hotel. Vacancies? Yes, a look inside showed nothing but
vacancies.

This image called out to me, begging me to tell its story.

A red chair behind the hotel sat empty, facing a swing
long abandoned, pushed slowly back and forth by the breeze.We continued, passing condemned bridges along
the way, allowing us to quietly enjoy the river and the colors of the changing
season.

Traversing abandoned bridges.

At Skedee, another town in Pawnee County, we found the
Bond of Friendship, memorializing the truce between European conquerors and the
Native Americans. The monument towered over a crumbling food market, an
abandoned auto garage, and a service station that sold gas for 49.9 cents a
gallon. We only wished we could fill
up there, instead we pressed on along highway 16 to our final stop - Shamrock,
six miles south of Drumright.

A steam engine, my shadow, and my trusty point-and-shoot.

The once booming oil town
of 1,000 denizens is slowly fading into a community of about 100 remaining
residents. Not a majority of them are Irish or even of the Emerald Isle decent but
the spirit of the “Saints and Scholars” comes to life through Ireland Street
every St. Patrick’s Day, passing along the Shamrock Museum, a sad little
institution that displayed baubles coated with dust and disregard. Most of the
buildings were in the same state. A little red tractor parked by a school in decay
and nothing much else. Before we pulled
out, a man in a truck drove up to us, asking if we were visiting. He gave us a
pocket history about the town and invited us to his home where we could see
pictures of Shamrock when it was once alive. We didn’t need to, we thought.

Stories stay alive in these dead towns.

We
only had to look at his friendly face to know that Shamrock is still the home of
the living.

doesnt matter what camera you used - walang lang yan, lang yan - langya lang hkhkbasta the results are great.as for your march visit -sureee kitakits. just text me. if you have the time, maybe we can do a one day PhotoWalk :)

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About Me

If you want to know how to get there and what to see, Google will help you. But if you want to see the heart of a place, then let Ana Maria Villanueva- Lykes reveal it to you. This travelogue traces her paper trails - some of her favorite published articles, mostly on travel and then some. Ana Maria is not a tourist; she is a traveler. She is a widely published writer, a novelist, editor, wife, mother, and lover of life.
Read her full story at
http://anaviajeralogue.blogspot.com/p/about-author.html